Egress Solutions Product & Innovation Management Blog

The Forgotten Part of Win/Loss Analysis: The Win

At Egress, we see a disturbing trend -C-Suite, Sales, and Product Management are diving deep on the ‘Loss’ analysis and ignoring the ‘Wins’.

After all, the ‘Wins’ are already won – right?

Wrong!

At Egress, we believe the importance lies in gaining the Buyer’s Insight rather than the Seller’s mistakes

Not every sales win isgoodfor the company and with proper analysis, a ‘Win’ can be just as informative if not more informative than a ‘Loss’ analysis.

Ina recentWin/Loss Analysis Assessment,we identified that thetop sales performers were outpacing everyone else on a number of deals and the total revenuegenerated buttended to only sell the lowest margin products.

In the same assessment, the deals that represented the largest number of winsacross the entire sales teamand produced the highest contract valueand marginfell into three distinct customer segments. The client was focusing its marketing broadly across all customer segments and now realized they had an opportunity to refocus their efforts and dominate those 3 segments. By doing this,sales would spend less time and effort on lower percentage opportunities.

Fromsome simple calculations, it is anticipated the client’s Win/Loss percentage willimprovefrom 43% ‘Win’ rate to a 62% ‘Win’ rate within 2 quarters. All this becauseweexamined the ‘Wins’ andhelped them refocustheir efforts.

Don’t get us wrong, there is plenty to learn from the “Loss Analysis” as well. Butthe Berenstain Bearsmentality ofshowing us ‘what not to do’doesn’t teach us the 'how to do things the right way' (even if some of our mistakes are pretty funny).

Perhaps the problem comes from the name itself… “Win/Loss”. It’s naturally polarizing and figuring out what not to do is often easier than figuring out what to do, despite not having as much impact on a deal. At Egress Solutions, we believe that the importance lies in gaining theBuyer’s Insightrather than the Seller’smistakes. This is one of the reasons this type of analysis should not be done by the Sales team. Even the most honest attempt from the sales team is biased. The Product Management team should own this effort andit isn’t a one and done. We recommend establishing a baseline and repeating the effort quarterly.

A trueBuyer’s Insight Assessmentcanincrease your win rate, making each at bat more productive for your team.At Egress Solutions, we help build Buyer's Insight programs for ourclients, so they can accelerate growth. Contact us today for more information about our Buyer Insight Assessment offering.